Did you know that it's possible to view the content of the biggest and most widely used online encyclopedia without the need for Internet connectivity? That's right, Wikipedia, with over 10 million articles in 253 languages can be viewed offline in your Linux box anytime, anywhere.

There are actually 4 easy ways to take your favorite Wikipedia offline:

1. Download Wikipedia as database XML or SQL dump

HERE you can find the complete copy of all Wikimedia wikis, in the form of wikitext source and metadata embedded in XML. A number of raw database tables in SQL form are also available.

2. Download or Purchase Wikipedia on DVD

This is perhaps the easiest way to get Wikipedia for offline use. However, it is currently available in English and only contains around 2,000 selected articles. --The articles were chosen based on criteria for quality and importance set by the Wikipedia community. According to Wikimedia Foundation and Linterweb, larger releases in a variety of languages are coming real soon.

3. Static HTML dumpsGrab or download pages from all Wikipedia wikis in HTML format HERE. Note that the June 2008 edition dump has no image snapshot, it's just HTML. The archives are packaged as a 7-zipped tar file.

4. Pocket WikipediaThe other easy way to take Wikipedia with you is by downloading and installing "Pocket Wikipedia". Its download size is only about 180MB but it contains hand-checked selection of Wikipedia articles the size of a fifteen volume encyclopedia with 24,000 images and 14 million words. It was first created for the PocketPC platform, but it is now available for the Linux desktop.